Editor’s note: We’ve met and visited with a lot of wonderful people in the bluegrass world in the past couple years. We asked a handful of some of those memorable people we’ve visited with over the past year and invited them to share a favorite bluegrass Christmas memory. Eddie Adcock was kind enough to share his favorite Christmas Memory with us today.

Eddie Adcock. Photo by Hank Widick.

Eddie Adcock’s favorite Christmas memories…

“The first new store-bought shirt I ever had of my very own, I got for Christmas when I was 10 years old. It was good flannel, white and dark gray and purple, really pretty. I really liked that shirt.

“I might have had other store-bought shirts before that, but they would have been hand-me-downs from my brothers.

“Mama used to make almost all our clothes. She was good at it, too. You couldn’t really tell the difference between her’s and store-bought, even though my shirts were made out of flour sacks. And when summer came, she’d cut the sleeves off, and then she’d sew ‘em back on when winter came.

“But Mama always made sure us kids looked decent, not raggle-taggle.

“I never thought of us as poor, but we sure didn’t have much money, especially during World War II. And since we never had much money, we didn’t really care about it.

“Mama and Daddy gave us things like socks for Christmas. I didn’t mind that because what I liked most about Christmas was the festive time – family together, good food, lots of cakes and homemade candy, and everybody happy. No, I didn’t mind just getting socks.

“When my sister Nancy married Herman Lam, who worked at the rubber plant, that year at Christmas they were able to give me some cowboy chaps and cuffs, and a chrome-plated six-shooter in a holster, and some caps for the pistol. It was the biggest thing I’d ever gotten for Christmas. I got socks, too, I’m sure. You had to have stuff like that.

“Then the next year Herman and Nancy gave me a BB gun. It was the last thing in the world I’d have ever thought somebody would give me, just unbelievable. It was my favorite outside toy for a long time.

“You wouldn’t believe how many kinds of desserts my Mama would make at Christmas. It would put to shame a buffet at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. She’d make chocolate cakes, and German chocolate or walnut-chocolate ones, fruitcakes, and other kinds of cakes. And there were lemon pies, and chocolate, sweet potato, pumpkin, apple and peach pies. Also banana pudding and bread pudding. She made a lot of different homemade candy too.

“There was so much baking going on. It was Christmas!”